SIMON: Who thinks late night comedy is still about fun?

SHARE SIMON: Who thinks late night comedy is still about fun?
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As American politics have become more contentious, Jimmy Fallon has struggled to catch up with an edgier approach to comedy. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Hand in Hand/Getty Images)

“Life is too important to be taken seriously,” Oscar Wilde said. Which is why late night TV was invented.

After a hard day, after watching the crisis-packed local news reprise the disaster-filled national news, it was time to kick back a little. Hear a joke or two. Watch an interview with a movie star or a sports celebrity. And then fall asleep in your La-Z-Boy.

The host was generally funny and generally amiable: Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. And then there was Jimmy Fallon. He was a new-wave host. He could play instruments, sing, dance and do impressions. But he wasn’t too different. He was still generally funny and generally amiable.

OPINION

His politics were not easily discernible, which was also a late-night tradition. He appeared to be somewhere in the middle. He wasn’t interested in eviscerating anybody.

Which is why he got in so much trouble.

“We live in an era now where if you don’t take sides, both sides hate you,” Jay Leno told the New York Times. When Leno was doing late night TV, the times were simpler. “Bush was dumb, and Clinton was horny,” Leno said. It wasn’t all that vicious. It was just television.

And then Donald Trump came along. And he was as serious as the plague. Mexicans? Wall them out. Muslims? Deny them visas. Waterboarding? “I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.” He believed that Arab-Americans cheered on 9/11, Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and climate change is a hoax.

He groped women and “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by [their genitals]. You can do anything.”

And so what was a comedian to do with a piece of work like that? A piece of work that quickly began winning primaries and then the Republican nomination and then the presidency.

Here’s what a comedian does about that. If you’re Jimmy Fallon you make jokes like this one: “Donald Trump was recently being interviewed, and said that he’s not a fan of the man bun trend, and wouldn’t want to wear his hair that way. You know it’s bad when even Donald Trump is like, ‘I’m not putting that on my head.’”

Maybe it makes you want to chuckle. Trump and his hair was not exactly breaking new ground, but late night was not a new-ground kind of place.

Until Donald Trump came along and the wolf pack smelled fresh meat. Stephen Colbert, pretending to address Trump, said: “Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer. You talk like a sign language gorilla that got hit in the head. In fact the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.”

Very tough stuff. The kind of stuff that made people reach for their iPhones and text: “R u watchen Colbert?”

And even when Colbert was milder, he wasn’t very mild. “Is it possible that we’ve all been groped by Donald J. Trump, but just didn’t feel it because his tiny baby hands?” Colbert tweeted.

Still, Fallon was doing fine. Until the roof fell in. He booked Trump, and Fallon, because he was Fallon, thought the highlight would be asking if he could mess up Trump’s hair.

Trump said “go ahead,” and Fallon messed up his hair. The audience roared, and it made Trump look like a regular guy. Which he is not. And even if he were, it’s no longer the role of late-night comics to play nice with politicians.

“Yes, Trump is unstoppable,” Colbert said. “He’s like Godzilla with less foreign policy experience.”

Colbert got it. Fallon had come from the milder world of “Saturday Night Live” and Colbert had come from the mean streets of cable TV. Fallon had no politics, and Colbert had enough politics for both of them. And Colbert started beating Fallon in the ratings.

Vanity Fair wrote: “As [Seth] Meyers put it, both Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ changed the TV landscape in the mid-aughts by proving that ‘audiences did like hearing what a host’s point of view is.’”

Fallon was devastated as the wolf pack turned on him. Sonia Saraiya of Variety wrote: “Who wouldn’t Fallon interview with such fawning, giggly acceptance? Where would he draw the line? How long will it take before American audiences lose all their faith in him, as an honest person they can watch every night?”

Fallon said of the hair mussing’s aftermath: “I was devastated. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just trying to have fun.”

Fun? Where did he get the idea that comedy was still about fun?

Will Rogers once said: “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”

Works for me.

Send letters to: letters@suntimes.com.

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